I commute to work each day in an ultra-low-emissions vehicle. My ride spews half the greenhouse gases of the average new car released the same model year. I think I deserve a green star.

That's not the way the California Air Resources Board sees it, apparently. The state's "clean air agency" is happy enough that I'm motoring along the freeways and roads in my ULEV. But it would much prefer that I was driving an ultra-low-emitting plug-in electric hybrid, or, better yet, full-on electric vehicle, rather than my gas-powered ULEV.

"The need to get off dependence on petroleum," said CARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols, "is really what is driving this."

Well, excuse me, as former Garden Grove resident Steve Martin used to say. I thought CARB was determined to reduce CO2 emissions, which, if left unchecked, global warmists warn, will lead to a climate cataclysm. Now Nichols tells us that the real goal is to wean California motorists off of oil, and onto electricity.

Well, that's not how Assembly Bill, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, was advertised to residents of the Golden State. Its aim is to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

It was all about reducing greenhouse gas emissions to a carbon-dioxide equivalent of 427 million metric tons.

The attack on oil really is based on politics. And global warming has provided a convenient pretext for environmental groups to demonize Big Oil, and for politically driven government agencies, like CARB, to use their regulatory powers to drive down demand for the gasoline produced by oil companies.

But it is myopic to demonize the oil industry – to artificially dampen demand for gasoline by regulation (and taxation) – because few industries contribute as much to the nation's economic growth as do oil and gas.

A study last year by IHS Consulting noted that the average hourly wage for production workers in the oil and gas industry is $35.15, far exceeding the average wages paid by manufacturing, wholesale trade, education and many other fields.

They study also reported that unconventional oil and gas activity is bringing enormous benefits to the U.S. economy, supporting more than 1.7 million jobs, contributing $63 billion in federal, state and local tax receipts in 2012 and adding $238 billion in value last year to the nation's gross domestic product.

Should we be concerned about our continuing dependence on foreign oil? Should we worry about the climatic impact of consuming so much gasoline by so many vehicles in California, and in the rest of country?

Absolutely.

But, as Lee Lane points out in a recent essay published in the Milken Institute Review, the U.S. is trending toward less reliance on oil imports. In 2006, foreign crude accounted for 60 percent of the nation's overall oil use. In 2013, that figure will be reduced to 40 percent, the Department of Energy forecasts.

Oil combustion, which accounts for more a third of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, remains an issue for those who believe that climate change is a threat to life as we know it. But there are encouraging developments on that front as well.

The market research firm J.D. Power notes that such innovations as the three-way catalytic converter and computer-controlled electronic fuel injection have reduced automotive emissions today to less than 5 percent of what they were 40 years ago.

And, it should be noted, those reductions in vehicular pollutants were achieved without altogether abandoning oil.

The same kind of innovation can help California reach its goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the end of this decade. Indeed, most of the low-emission electric vehicles on the road today are not entirely electric, but gas-electric hybrids.

They have an important role in meeting the AB32 goal; as do entirely gas-powered ultra-low-emission vehicles like mine.

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